Children's environmental health

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Global Plan of Action for Children's Health and the Environment

Each year around three million children under the age of five die due to environment-related diseases.

Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated 1.6 million children under the age of five. As much as 60 percent of acute respiratory infections worldwide are related to environmental conditions.

Diarrhoeal diseases claim the lives of nearly 1.5 million children every year. Eighty to 90 percent of these diarrhoea cases are related to environmental conditions, in particular, contaminated water and inadequate sanitation.

Nearly 1 million children under the age of five died of malaria in 2008. Up to 90 percent of malaria cases are attributed to environmental factors.